| A Japanese military press photo of Allied Commonwealth soldiers, mostly Indians and Gurkhas, marching through Singapore’s Chinatown during the victory parade by the Japanese victors, who occupied the city 2 days earlier when the British colonial government surrendered. When United Kingdom Royal Army Lieutenant General Arthur E. Percival (December 26, 1887 – January 31, 1966) surrendered the Allied Commonwealth garrison, his forces were in such disarray that an immediate accurate head count was not immediately known. Several 1,000 people were killed in a flotilla of commercial and military ships that ran into the Sumatra invasion force as they fled Singapore and were sunk by naval gunfire or aerial attack. Others successfully escaped. Of the remaining 85,000 troops, about 55 to 65,000 were South Asian. The surrender at Singapore swelled the ranks of the Indian National Army (INA). This organization, the Japanese promised, would liberate Greater India from the British Crown Viceroy’s Colony. Indian soldiers captured at Singapore and Malaya were separated from the British and Australians and handed over to the Japanese. On February 17, around 45,000 South Asian soldiers were assembled in Farrer Park. A British officer, Colonel Cecil Hunt of Percival’s staff (November 22, 1989 – October 1985), made perfunctory remarks to the effect that the Indians were now prisoners of war and that they should abide by Japanese orders. Imperial Japanese Army Major Iwaichi Fujiwara (March 1, 1908 − February 24, 1986), the intelligence officer in charge of fermenting resistance groups in India, then delivered a carefully crafted speech, which was simultaneously translated into English for the officers and Hindustani for the men. “The Japanese Army will not treat you as Prisoners of War, he proclaimed, but as friends.” Explaining Tokyo’s aims for associating the liberated peoples of Asia in a co-prosperity sphere, he announced that Japan stood ready to provide all assistance for the liberation of India and exhorted his audience to join the INA. Fujiwara recalled a tumult of excitement rising from the park upon the announcement of the INA. Of the roughly 60,000 Indian soldiers and officers who surrendered at Singapore, around 20,000 chose to join the INA. Several battalions went over almost entirely intact. Why was the INA so much more successful in attracting volunteers than the Indian Legion, the Nazi German equivalent? The contrast is particularly stark in the numbers of officers: 400 Indian officers joined the INA, while only 1 Viceroy’s Commissioned Officer (VCO) volunteered for the Indian Legion. To be sure, about 250 of these officers came from the Medical Corps, and many of them volunteered to help treat their fellow soldiers. The remaining 150 included around a 100 VCOs. Even so, the differences are striking. Several factors accounted for the disparity between the Indian Legion and the INA. 1st, the expansion of the Indian Army had resulted in a significant increase in the Indian Commissioned Officers (ICO) component of the officer class. Between May 1940 and September 1941, 1,400 Indians were recruited as officers. In 1942, the annual intake was increased from 900 to 2,000. More importantly, there were many more ICOs in the Malayan theatre than in North Africa. The general staff had initially attached higher priority to the Middle East and had avoided sending the Indian units to that theatre. There was an unstated assumption that the Indian units would be more than capable of tackling the “inferior” Japanese troops. The ICOs were more politically attuned than the older King’s Commissioned Indian Officers. This was particularly true of the younger ICOs, later designated as Emergency Commissioned Indian Officers (ECIOs), who had joined after the outbreak of war. Military intelligence was concerned about the political attitude of these officers “who are entering the Indian Army in increasing numbers: It is certain that the majority are Nationalist in outlook, and that many regard Gandhi with veneration.” An Indian officer commissioned during the war and posted in Malaya until January 1942 observed that of Indian officers, “about sixty percent are ‘Nationalists’ and desire an early independence for India. The remaining forty percent are, in a general way, dissatisfied with British rule in India but hold no strong political views.” A King’s Commissioned Indian Officer (KCIO) who had escaped from Japanese captivity similarly held that “every Indian (soldier included) desires a higher political status for India. The difference is only in degree. The extremists want complete independence, the moderates Dominion status, and the last group will be satisfied with something approaching Dominion status.” The ICOs also felt that they were being discriminated against. Not only did they receive less pay and fewer perks than the British ECOs, but they were paid less than the KCIOs as well. “ICOs do not understand, military intelligence noted, ‘why they should be paid less than the British officers, sometimes possessing less experience, who are performing similar duties.’” All of this – lower pay, passive and active discrimination, lack of training, desire to remain with their deep familial and friend connections, and finally the surprising competency of the Japanese led a 3rd of the Indians to join the INA. But the promises of marching against the British Raj shoulder-to-shoulder were not to be. The INA, when initially formed in January 1942, was promptly deployed against their former comrades-in-arms in Malaya, not India. An INA contingent accompanied the disastrous Kohima-Imphal Offensive in 1944, launched against India, but the INA was never seriously a threat to the Raj. The value lay in the propaganda and promises of a place in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Like British Colonialism, Co-Prosperity meant that South Asians would be subordinate to Japanese interests and racial hierarchies. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1532.jpg |
| Image Size | 626.48 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2048 x 1940 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | Imperial Japanese Army |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | February 17, 1942 |
| Location | Chinatown, Outram |
| City | Singapore |
| State or Province | Straits Settlements |
| Country | Singapore |
| Archive | |
| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
Author of the World War II Multimedia Database